Anti-gay myths die hard. Or maybe they never die at all. Over the weekend, a leading figure in the Southern Baptist Convention recycled a number of the most egregious lies about LGBT people to reach the conclusion that they’re working to bring about the “outright sexual paganization of society.” Whatever that is. Yesterday, Right Wing Watch noted that Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), hosted Rena Lindevaldsen, an associate professor of law at Liberty University, on his radio show, “Richard Land Live!” over the weekend. The two discussed Lindevaldsen’s new book about ex-gay Lisa Miller, who allegedly kidnapped the daughter she was raising with her lesbian former partner. Land took the opportunity launch a volley of time-worn anti-gay insults.

Land has made anti-gay statements in the past. In 2008, for example, he claimed that the radical homosexual agenda is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In 2010, he called for a filibuster in Congress to stop the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which he said would “essentially destroy” the American military. Over the weekend, however, he seems to have really opened the floodgates, dragging out old anti-gay standards, including the old “homosexuals are a danger to children” falsehood and claiming that LGBT people are “recruiting down in the grade school levels. They’re recruiting for homosexual clubs and it’s really child abuse is what it is.” He also accused “gay rights activists” of trying to “reduce [Christians] to the level of the Ku Klux Klan.”

In another statement that can be traced to the work of thoroughly discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, Land said that “male homosexuals die much earlier than heterosexual males” because of the “dangerous stuff” they do. Lindevaldsen agreed. According to Land, homosexuals ultimately are set on destroying marriage, marginalizing people of faith, and legitimizing polyamory and pedophilia. “If this dam breaks,” he warned, “the tidal wave will be just an outright sexual paganization of society.”

The SBC’s ERLC has been fretting about “the homosexual agenda” for several years.

In 2002, for example, Barrett Duke, director of the Research Institute at the ERLC, claimed on ERLC’s website that “pro-homosexuals” were “trying to indoctrinate” children in schools.

Regarding hate crime legislation, Duke wrote in 2007 that such laws would lead to the persecution of Christians and their prosecution for “thought-crimes.” Then in 2009, Duke sounded a warning about the “radical homosexual agenda” silencing and marginalizing people of faith while “indoctrinating” children.” Our faith and the radical homosexual agenda,” Duke wrote, “are on track for a cataclysmic conflict.”

I have come to the conclusion that lying and making ridiculous, malicious accusations, the worse the better, against anyone they don’t like, is a way of life with the religious (please don’t call them Christian) right wing fundamentalists. I have a blood relative (legally a sister) who is one of them and, because she hates me (for something that only exists in her mind), she gets on tangents when something sets her off, and accuses me of anything she can think of, things that there’s not a word of truth to. She says whatever pops into her head that she thinks will make me look bad and discredit me. The religious right hates LGBT people just as she hates me and just as some hate people of color and they evidently have no conscience about anything they do against us or anyone they don’t like. Anyone that full of hate is not only sinful, according to Christian standards, but is also very mentally ill, in my opinion.

Mary Jane Stone

As a very involved Democrat I appreciate your publishing the truth about the Republican Governor’s association and how it recruits supporters. I am also a recovering Southern Baptist who now crusades against that group. This is the same old same old prejudice and hate justifying garbage being passed of as “information” by that large, wealthy denomination. Keep it up, we in the trenches need solid, provable information with which to wage the good fight.

Dooleeoo

This attitude is widespread. In Carroll County, Maryland, the elected Board of County Commissioners have hired a “public relations” goon named James Simpson to share their views with the public. (SPLC recently mentioned him as the author of a report revealing a vast hispanic conspiracy posted on the “Accuracy in Media” site.) Here are Mr. Simpson’s words from http://tinyurl.com/3p3j957 : “the Homosexual agenda is dark and dangerous. …the Homosexual agenda not only seeks to acclimatize children to sex and especially gay sex, but a significant portion of this movement seeks to legalize pedophilia,” What is our country coming to if elected officials who would hire someone like this for a public relations role?

Leland Mellott

How many millions of times during every one 24 hour period are Rectumite Males (Straight Men) all around this earth threatening to sodomize one another in their expletives? How many billions of times has this occurred over the past eight thousand years? They can’t screw each other, so they have to kill each other? The sodomy taboo among Rectumites has to go; therefore, it will go. Then, perhaps we’ll have enduring peace on this earth.

David McKinnon

The myths have been proven false by time and by science. The only people who could possibly still believe this are those who want to maintain the belief and those who cannot fathom the falsity. The former group are beneath contempt and the latter group should be pitied.

If the Southern Baptist Convention is enjoying a tax exempt status so that they can use their funds to promote hate, one might wonder why it is allowed.

CM

Two fairly random reactions:

The idea of a Southern Baptist Convention “Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission” immediately reminded me of Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth,” which of course was all about suppressing the truth.

Polyamory: According to the Bible, that wisest of kings, Solomon, had 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings 11:3). It doesn’t get much more “poly” than that.

M. Bright

That the Republican Governor’s Association is trolling for marks by purchasing subscriber lists from virulently racist publications is disturbing, to say the least. But what’s even more disturbing is that it’s never to my knowledge been publicized. I wonder how Jewish voters might respond to that information, not to mention many others considering casting a vote for the GOP, which seems to have no problem welcoming Nazis, Klan people and various other stripes of unbalanced miscreants under it’s “Big Tent.”

Mitch Beales

No need for “gay rights activists” to “reduce [Christians] to the level of the Ku Klux Klan,” the SBC is doing just fine on that front.